We did it our way. That is, after pushing names up, down, onto and off of this list for weeks, even months (though it felt like years), we finally threw aside conventional, TMZ-derived notions of fame and notoriety and just went at it. In a city fat with boldfaced names, who’s big in our view of this city, and why? Who do we care about? Who can’t we avoid, even if we want to?
Subjective? Of course; as with any appraisal of something as vaporous as celebrity, this isn’t an exact science. On the other hand, it isn’t rocket surgery, either. Once we began looking at the famescape through Weekly-colored glasses, it fell into place more easily. But not too easily. Go ahead, try it yourself: Compare Harry Reid with Criss Angel. Who’s more famous in a Vegas context? As that little thought exercise shows, there are fluctuating, maddening, inconsistent standards at work. We cop to that right here.
Celebrity in Las Vegas is a funny animal. True, we’re a city of 2 million-plus, but at the same time we’re distinctly small-town in how everybody knows everybody. So there are plenty of local celebrities who are as important to our city’s character as the national ones, and they had to be accounted for. So we have.
A parting thought: Placement on this list doesn’t necessarily imply endorsement. By putting Harry Reid at No. 12, we’re not urging you to vote for him. We just attempted to measure the ephemeral, and this is what we came up with. Disagree? Good; can’t wait to hear from you.
1: Penn Jillette
Entertainer, TV star, provocateur
Is Vegas a good place to be famous? It is. It’s like New York or LA in that people don’t gawk. If I walk into Starbucks, somebody might say hi to me, say hi to my daughter—some people even call her by name—but they’re cool about it.
Does that confuse your daughter—strangers knowing her name? When you’re a 5-year-old, a lot of people you don’t know call you by name. And if we still lived in villages (like we’re supposed to) everybody would know her name. So, in her mind, no, nothing’s out of the ordinary.
Let’s talk about your TV show Bullshit! Will you ever run out of theories to debunk and people to expose? If you build a kingdom on bullshit, you’re not in danger of running out of it. Our producer says that Teller and I can take any subject in the news and do a credible show on it. Sure, we like to have a villain, something to call “bullshit” on, but if we don’t, we can depart from that model.
Are there any groups you won’t go after? We haven’t tackled Scientology because Showtime doesn’t want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists—I’m not sure. And we haven’t tacked Islam because we have families.
Meaning, you won’t attack Islam because you’re afraid it’ll attack back … Right, and I think the worst thing you can say about a group in a free society is that you’re afraid to talk about it—I can’t think of anything more horrific.
Of course, it might please some Islamic fundamentalists to hear you say that you won’t talk about them because you’re afraid … It might, but you have to say what you believe, even it if pleases somebody you disagree with—that issue comes up all the time in moral discourse.
You do go after Christians, though … Teller and I have been brutal to Christians, and their response shows that they’re good fucking Americans who believe in freedom of speech. We attack them all the time, and we still get letters that say, “We appreciate your passion. Sincerely yours, in Christ.” Christians come to our show at the Rio and give us Bibles all the time. They’re incredibly kind to us. Sure, there are a couple of them who live in garages, give themselves titles and send out death threats to me and Bill Maher and Trey Parker. But the vast majority are polite, open-minded people, and I respect them for that.
And we respect you for your respect. Congratulations on being a star. I’ve always thought of myself as sub-star, as opposed to star or superstar. I’ve been out with superstars; I’ve been out with Madonna, Prince, Bob Dylan, Jay Leno, and it’s insane. It’s dangerous and frightening. Being a sub-star is more like living in a small town: Everybody recognizes you and is happy to see you, but that’s it. –Rick Lax